- I know my cars, this is a '52 Chevy pickup,
with a ram-jet engine, let's go, lift it up.
Bring that drill over here!
[vocalizing drill noises]
All right, let's go!
Hi, I'm Nancy Cartwright,
and you might not recognize my face
but you probably recognize my voice.
Hi, I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?
[laughing]
I do other voices on "the Simpsons",
I'm Ralph Wiggum.
When I grow up, I wanna be a principal or a caterpillar!
Nelson Muntz,
the thing about huckleberries is once you've had fresh,
you'll never go back to canned!
Todd Flanders,
I get to anoint their feet.
Well, Maggie, there's Maggie!
[vocalizing baby noises]
I'm also Chuckie, on "Rugrats".
I hope there's not any clowns, there aren't any clowns,
are there?
I don't like clowns!
[yelling]
Rufus the Naked Mole Rat.
[vocalizing rodent noises]
I know, I get paid to do that!
It's ridiculous!
Today, I'm with Vanity Fair and I'm going to be doing some
improvisations for some characters
that I've never seen before
and give them some personality.
I mean, the first thing you notice about this li'l gal
is that she's messed up.
I like to check out, normally it's just checking out
kind of the mouth and the jaw,
'cause that helps me in terms of
deciding the diction and if he or she has a lisp,
stuff like that.
She looks like Wednesday from "The Addams Family",
you know, gone awry.
All those little nails and tacks that are stuck in her nose
and her belly button and her neck and ear and head
and hair and all that, I think there's,
I think it's self-inflicted.
She's tough, her eyes are not the same size,
her tongue is sticking out, and she look so,
I don't know, it'd be sorta hard to talk
with a nail, it'd be hard to talk with a nail
in your tongue!
I don't know how she would shut her mouth!
She would have to talk like that,
get away from me!
[heavy breathing]
Did you notice my earring?
I do have an earring on!
She might sound like that.
By the time she's middle age, and I'm just kind of creatin'
on this myself, I don't see any hints of any coffee
or cigarettes but it'd be kind of hard to smoke a,
if she started out like this as a teenager,
and she can't quite close her mouth when she's talking
by the time she's middle aged she might be a little bit
more beaten up and perhaps you'd [coughing]
talking a little bit [spitting] slower.
The accent just came naturally,
sometimes you just have to trust your instincts
on these things.
Oh, this guy's cute.
Right off the bat, I mean, obviously he's a bookworm.
You know, don't mean to be stereotypical
but he's got a tie on and he's bald
so I tend to think that he's a dude.
And he's smart, if he's a bookworm,
I mean, the idiom means that the guys',
whoever's a bookworm is like, really smart.
He has, he's got his tongue stickin' out too.
Major key, major key is where that tongue is.
But he's a little dude,
and he's also really smart, but not nerdy smart.
He's kinda cute smart, he's a little adorable.
So I think he might sorta sound like this,
he's got a little bit of a, you know,
here's the deal, I just love reading
and sometimes I like to look up words in the dictionary
so if I look up a word, like, for example
this will surprise you.
The word nice, when you look up nice, if you look up
the etymology, that means the derivation, of course,
if you look up the etymology of nice, this is amazing,
but nice actually comes from um, somewhere and it actually
means foolish or stupid.
That is not me, I just am a bookworm,
and I like to read, thank you very much.
So if he was a professor, I would probably
bring his voice down and say, ladies and gentlemen,
students of my class, here I go, and you see
I just brought the pitch down just a little bit
to make him sound a little bit older.
May I please have your attention,
your attention, all eyes up front!
Thank you very much.
This is like the baby, this is like the baby
on "the Incredibles", right?
It's just sort of like Baby Jack, except, like, 2D.
And for a baby, this baby looks like,
well the blue tends to indicate that it's a boy
but it could be a girl and I mean, for a little baby,
sounds, it doesn't really matter if it's a boy or a girl.
You know and there's a whole universal thing
about baby sounds, that [cooing]
[gurgling]
[laughing]
[babbling]
Did you hear that, it was a little pony [neighing].
If this was a baby on the Rugrats,
oh, like a little baby of like, say, Chuckie,
say Chuckie has a little baby brother.
[raspy cooing]
Chuckie, Chuckie!
Can't quite say Chuckie.
Ducky, ducky, ducky!
This is kind of a throwback, to me.
I love this art, she's tough, she's kind of like
Rosalind Russell, maybe, or she could be Katherine Hepburn.
She looks like a leader, the short hair,
but I think she's, I think she's really pretty.
But she's got a strength about her, look how she's holding
her fist, there, she's got,
and she's interested in fashion, she's got the necklace on,
she's got earrings, she's got a long thumbnail.
When I think of her, I kind of, kinda,
all right you guys!
We've got deadlines, we've gotta hit today!
Hey, what are you doin' over there?
Put that coffee down when I'm talkin' to you, pay attention!
We got heel ten goin' on here!
We've gotta hit this by ten o'clock this morning,
let's go!
She's kind of tough like that.
But if she's a glam queen, she might say,
see, for me, if I lower my voice a little bit
I don't sound so much like a kid,
I've got a natural sound of like, a kid!
But doing Brenda, I like her name, Brenda.
Hi guys, so I'm here, hey listen, so,
I was just wondering, can somebody go out and get me coffee
before we get started here?
And if I just slow her voice down just a little bit
and give it a little bit of a breathy quality.
I don't mean to bother you, but I was just wondering
can you see the holes, I'm not wearing
any earrings right now, I was just, can you see
the holes in my ears?
This is Vanity Fair.
That's a pretty dragon.
That's a pretty dragon, but, you know,
that fire and he flies, and,
what I get from this is like,
I get like, bad breath, I don't know, like
[raspy roar]
[hacking]
[clearing throat]
Wait what, there's no voice.
Oh, he doesn't have a voice, sort of like
Rufus the Naked Mole Rat?
Oh, awesome, okay.
I love her.
I instantly love her.
I think she's very soft-spoken,
well, the glasses are kind of a hint,
and perhaps stereotypical but she's kind of a subtle geek
but I think by the time she's 20,
she's gonna be a multi, multi-millionaire.
She's probably gonna invent something
on the internet or some app or something
and, but her mouth is shut and I think she's
a little bit mousy?
And I think she's sort of like, okay, um, listen,
I have an idea and I was wondering, you guys,
I know it's like two o'clock in the morning
but I would like to stick around and I'm good,
I'm good, just give me another coffee.
You know what, I just inspired myself,
I'm gonna change that.
I think this is better, she goes,
I'm good, I'm good.
You know, I'm gonna stick around here a little bit longer
and I know it's two A.M. but you know give me another coffee
or something like that because I gotta stay up late,
I've got this deadline that I've gotta hit
and I've gotta do it by ten o'clock in the morning
and if I go home right now I'm never gonna make my deadline
thank you!
Oh, oo, so yeah, we can twist this,
and here she's lookin' really sweet and everything
but let's say she's been picked on
and she's been a little bit victimized
and in order to defend herself,
she used to be like, okay, and like, no, no,
I've got a lotta things to do, and um,
you know, I really don't appreciate when you,
when you talk to me like that.
You know it's really kind of mean
and actually you look really ugly today,
leave me alone!
This one looks like a challenge to me, too.
He's got a cigarette in his mouth
and he's also, like, blowing up
so he's got somethin' and he's sort of smiling,
he's sorta grimacing, and he's, you know,
he looks like Edward G. Robinson.
He looks like, all right you guys,
all right, hear me now, hear me now.
Or maybe, soften it, all right you guys,
hear me now, listen, has anybody got a light?
And I don't mean for my cigarette.
He could be sorta tough and look, look when I do this,
look what happens when I do this voice, you know?
When I do Ralph Wiggum, his eyebrows go way up like this
but when I do Nelson Muntz it comes down like that.
When I do this atom bomb, all right you guys,
listen up, listen up all of ya I need your attention please,
somebody light my fire!
So, if he was a she,
if he was a she,
I don't know, I guess I could bring it up
a little bit higher, all right you guys!
I could also do it like that,
make it a little bit more nasal.
This is a little bit more nasal!
All right, all right, somebody, somebody toss me
because I feel a little bit held down here,
I'm about ready to blow!
I'm about ready blow, I'm ready to blow!
All right, this one, this monkey.
He's a cute little monkey.
He looks like a baby, he kind of looks like
he's just a little guy.
[intense throaty crying]
What's wrong, why you lookin' at me like that?
And he surprises you by the way that he talks.
He's got teeth, he cries a lot.
I don't have a problem!
Stop it, somebody, why am I naked!
But on the other hand, he's spitting because he's just
frustrated and spit's coming out him now,
but what if he's laughing
because he could be actually really laughing
and that's just, it's the same spit comin' out of his mouth.
[intense throaty laughter]
[coughing]
[rasping laughter]
You know, as a tip, if you're interested in voiceovers
there are few things that you can do to help yourself
and one of them is take classes on improvisation
because you get hired and the producers
are counting on you as a talent to be able to contribute
to what it is that you're doing.
Improvisation is coming up with something on the spot
that you are inspired by who your character is
so depending upon who your character is,
that little phrase or expression or sentence
or thought that you come up with makes your character
more real.
Way back when, some 30 years ago when we were doing
a table read of "the Simpsons",
it was just something that I blurted out, it was an ad lib,
and I said, "eat my shorts".
In high school I was in the marching band
and we would march to the cadence
of the drummers going dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, Fairmont West,
dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, Fairmont West,
and one summer it changed,
we were getting ready for the fall and the drum section
and all the trumpets and including me started saying
dun-dun-dun-dun-dun, eat my shorts.
And people would line up on, you know, on the street
to watch us march by,
they had no idea what we were saying
but we knew that we were saying
something that was a little naughty, perhaps, back then.
And that was fun and just all these years went by
and next thing you know, it's on three million t-shirts.
So, I'm Nancy Cartwright, and those were voices
of some characters that I've never seen before.
Hope you enjoyed it.